Great shady site! ~ Dog Pug

After being out in the hot sun for a while, it was so nice to pull into a shady site at Riverside Campground, part of Caballo Lake State Park. There are lots of big trees here, and lots of lawn. Still warm, in fact Caballo Lake State Park is usually a few degrees hotter than Elephant Butte State Park, but with the shade from the trees and clouds in the sky, it feels much cooler.

Here's our site - that tree kept the passenger side of The Palms in the shade for hours every day - NICE!

These guys - the squirrels - are all over the place here. Katie got a kick out of chasing them up trees when she got the chance. They sure are cute.

My fear is that they will get into the engine compartment, which happened before. I didn't have any issues with them this time, thank goodness. Although I did have little footprints on the engine dust, so I know some critters did get in. I have blinking solar lights on the ground under the engine, and I think that is keeping most of the critters away.

We walked down to the dry camping sites along the Rio Grande where we've camped before. It's too hot to dry camp now, although there were a couple of people camping there. Sure is beautiful - the river is really up, and we saw a Great Blue Heron. I've gotten a lot of good bird shots in this river in the past, but nothing this year. I didn't see many birds in the river and the Heron flew away as soon as he heard us coming. There were some pretty "sun flowers" here and there along the road:

I ran into Roxi while at Riverside - she left that day, but we had a nice chat in the morning. She told me about a baby snake in the Ladies Restroom, so we went over so I could see it and get a photo. It was curled up in a tight coil right inside the door jamb. I did get photos, but decided I've posted enough snakes for a while. It's interesting to see them and get a picture (as long as it's safe), but I'm tired of looking at them on my blog. Sorry snake lovers - if there is such a thing, LOL.

I haven't put up a humming bird feeder for a while, but they kept coming around and pecking at my permit decals on the window, so I filled one and hung it. I've never had some many hummers before! Next time I'll post some of the photos I got, but here's one I liked: